Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider, and though dogmas may hamper they cannot absolutely repress its growth.

The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.

My childhood was full of deep sorrows - colic, whooping-cough, dread of ghosts, hell, Satan, and a Deity in the sky who was angry when I ate too much plumcake.

These gems have life in them: their colors speak, say what words fail of.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.

the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is - I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid, when viewed in the light of their professed principles. ... They hardly know Christ was a Jew. And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion.

What people do who go into politics I can't think; it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred acres.